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Urban Policy in the Time of Obama

2016

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James DeFilippis, EditorAfterword by Cedric Johnson

How presidential policies have served—or failed to serve—America’s cities

Urban Policy in the Time of Obama explores a broad range of policy arenas that shape, both directly and indirectly, metropolitan areas and urbanization processes. It finds that most of the dominant policies and policy regimes of recent years have fallen short of easing the ills of America’s cities, and calls for a more equitable and just urban policy regime.

DeFilippis brings together a series of insightful analyses that focus on the urban policies of the Obama administration from different but interrelated perspectives.

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With his background as a community organizer and as a state legislator representing Chicago’s South Side, Barack Obama became America’s most “urban” president since Teddy Roosevelt. But what has been his record in dealing with the issues most impacting our metropolitan areas today? Looking past the current administration, what are the future prospects of the nation’s cities, and how have they been shaped by our policies in this century? Seeking to answer these questions, the contributors to Urban Policy in the Time of Obama explore a broad range of policy arenas that shape, both directly and indirectly, metropolitan areas and urbanization processes.

This volume reveals the Obama administration’s surprisingly limited impact on cities, through direct policy initiatives such as Strong Cities, Strong Communities, Promise Neighborhoods, and Choice Neighborhood Initiatives. There has been greater impact with broader policies that shape urban life and governance, including immigration reform, education, and health care.

Closing with Cedric Johnson’s afterword illuminating the Black Lives Matter movement and what its broader social context says about city governance in our times, Urban Policy in the Time of Obama finds that most of the dominant policies and policy regimes of recent years have fallen short of easing the ills of America’s cities, and calls for a more equitable and just urban policy regime.

James DeFilippis is associate professor in the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University. He is author or editor of six books, including Unmaking Goliath, which was named “Best Book in Urban Politics, 2004” by the American Political Science Association.

DeFilippis brings together a series of insightful analyses that focus on the urban policies of the Obama administration from different but interrelated perspectives.

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Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
James DeFilippis
1. National Urban Policy in the Age of Obama
Hilary Silver
2. The Subordination of Urban Policy in the Time of Financialization
Robert W. Lake
3. Obama, Race, and Urban Policy
Preston H. Smith II
4. Housing Policy and the Mortgage Foreclosure Crisis during the Obama Administration
Rachel G. Bratt and Dan Immergluck
5. Public Housing Policy under Obama (See the Clinton Administration)
Janet Smith
6. Immigrants and the Obama Urban Policies: Tarnishing the Golden Door
Christine Thurlow Brenner
7. Obama’s Education Policy: More Markets, More Inequality, New Urban Contestations
Pauline Lipman
8. Unions in the Obama Era: Laboring Under False Pretenses?
Nik Theodore
9. The Affordable Care Act: A Work Still in Progress. The Achievements and Shortcomings of the Affordable Care Act
J. Phillip Thompson
10. Still Swimming, Tides Rising: Community Change, Spatial Interventions, and the Challenge of Federal Place-based Anti-Poverty Public Policies
Amy T. Khare
11. Community Development in the Age of Obama
Kathe Newman
12. The Incompleteness of Comprehensive Community Revitalization
Todd Swanstrom
13. The Obama Administration’s Neighborhood Stabilization Program: From Foreclosure Crisis to What in Nashville’s Chestnut Hill?
Deirdre Oakley and James Fraser
14. Sustainable Fair Housing? Reconciling the Spatial Goals of Fair Housing and Sustainable Development in the Obama Administration
Edward G. Goetz
15. Regional Policy in the Age of Obama
Karen Chapple
16. Making Policy in the Streets
Lorraine C. Minnite and Frances Fox Piven
Conclusion. Why Urban Policy? On Social Justice, Urbanization, and Urban Policies
James DeFilippis
Afterword: Baltimore, the Policing Crisis, and the End of the Obama Era
Cedric Johnson
Contributors
Index

Many supporters expressed disappointment that the first African-American community organizer to be elected US President did not do more to help cities. Although Barack Obama began to embrace the subject of race relations late in his second term, his urban policy seemed to disappear as his Administration endured. Here is an excerpt from a new edited volume Urban Policy in the Time of Obama.